Blind Leading the Blind
Thanks for emailing this out with me, Bobby!
Summer's Gift
Docked in Lorngaard, Highgate
Morning of November 05, 2520
Joshua made his way down to the medbay. The business with the Blush Mine was done and it was time to stop being Jackson and start being Joshua again. He felt empty, as he always did when a mission was finished. Jackson's borrowed personality had been tossed to the side, but he hadn't had the time to start unpacking those mental boxes to bring Joshua back again. Before he could do that though, he needed his face back - when he looked in the mirror, he needed to be able to see himself, or at least the face he had grown used to. And that was where Arden came in.
When he arrived, he opened the door and then reached inside with his left hand, knocking on the inside wall. "Dr. Arden, do you mind if I come in?"
--
Arden looks up from the measurements he was making. "Of course not," he says. “What's up with you now?" Arden is wearing the ever-present white lab coat, but underneath he has a forest green silky tunic. Black slacks finish the outfit. Arden finishes putting the power back into a vial and stopping them with a rubber stopper. He then peels off the gloves and tosses them casually into a waste bin.
"Professional, social, or something else?" Arden smiles. "The reason for the visit."
--
"Professional, but I also don't see any reason why we can't add some social at the same time." Joshua caught himself running his hand over the back of his head and pulled it away. He'd be fighting Jackson mannerisms for a while.
"I'm ready to lose Jackson's face. I imagine that you and the rest of the crew are probably happy for that to happen." To be fair, Joshua was happy for that too. He used to hate coming away from a mission, leaving the borrowed personality, but this time he was definitely ready. Not sure what that means.
--
Arden nods, "Okay, that's fine. It's been ... educational observing you while you've been pretending to be Jackson. Though you weren't really pretending were you?" Arden looks at the ex-spy, ex-infiltrator, ex-something with an quizzical expression. "It's a very odd thing to be talking to you as you but have Jackson reply back. Very... confusing for us on the outside. I can't imagine how it would be for you on the inside."
"Go ahead and climb onto the examination couch," Arden says with a wave towards the high padded bench. "I'll get the equipment ready."
--
Joshua made his way over to the couch, pushing himself up with a little hop. "It is actually less confusing during..." He tried to think about how to explain it. "I just put everything that was Joshua away while I'm the other person. So there's nothing to be confused about. It's now that gets hard."
He paused and scratched the side of his head. "When I have to come back."
--
Arden shakes his head as he opens a cabinet and then unlocks a smaller compartment. As he removes the various tools he says, "See, I don't know if I could take everything that is 'Arden' and put it away. Then who would I be?" He smiles. "But then drama fascinated me on Osiris. There wasn't a weekend that went by when I didn't try to get to the opera, or the Boardwalk, or even a movie."
As Arden picks up the tray with the instruments and moves towards Joshua, he asks, "I guess... well, what is your background? What do you remember? If you don't mind me asking…"
--
Then who would I be? That was the question, wasn't it? Right now, in that in-between stage, everything felt like watching movies of other people's lives. Watching Jackson try and distract Escobar. Watching Joshua flirt with Rina. He knew he ought to feel things, but right now feelings and emotions were all very distant.
"I don't mind the asking, but there's not really much to tell." Joshua watched Arden gather the tools, some of which he recognized, some of which he didn't. "I don't remember anything before I was twelve. I assume I had..." And Joshua stopped and chuckled softly.
"I was going to say I assume I had a life before I was twelve. But I guess that's a false assumption to make. You and I have a lot in common, Arden. But at least you know where you came from."
--
Arden pauses, "I suppose. But I don't know much more than that. There is this nagging question about why I was created." Arden smiles self-deprecatingly at that odd comment. "Still figuring out that. Rina and Nika, they're the normal ones. They had families, a childhood. I had a childhood, if you can call it that. Most of my time was spent in the classroom. Friendship, playing, games... all that is rather alien to me."
--
Joshua nodded, understanding. "Sounds like my time at the Academy. We could be brothers. Soulmates, if you want to irk Faria." He chuckled again. "And speaking of things we have in common, I've been meaning to ask you a question." He never was quite sure if Arden had personal boundaries, but if he did, the next question might cross that line. Had to be careful. "Do you mind if I ask you about you and Nika? I think I might be falling into a similar situation and I could use all the info I can get. It's such new territory for me. I don't want to pry though."
--
Arden makes a face at the mention of Faria and souls. But he lets it pass - it could be another conversation for another day.
Arden smiles, "No, I don't mind. Personal boundaries are ... a new thing for me. Confusing too, what you can say to one person and get a smile will earn you a slap from another."
"Anyhow, Nika..." Arden pauses and then pulls a stool over to sit down, forgetting completely about the procedure that he was about to perform on Joshua. "Nika and I started off as mutual support, someone's arms that you can snuggle in and not be worried about repercussions, but as for what it is turning into.... I have no idea."
He fiddles with his fingers, finally clasping them firmly in his lap, "I mean she said she loved me not too long ago. And I am not sure what that means, or what she means by it. To her, it is an acknowledgement of our friendship. To me, well, I'm not sure. What I know about love I have read in books, seen in movies, and watched in plays. All those places make love so much ... more than what Nika and I have. Is that realistic?” Arden asks. "I don't know, so I am confused. About it all."
"I do feel the things that Nika says she feels when she means love," Arden asks, "So am I in love? I don't think so. So why not?"
Arden looks up at Joshua, "You have any insight into this? I feel so lost and confused (hey isn't that a song from Earth-that-Was?)."
--
"It's like the blind leading the blind, but I don't know which of us is in front." Joshua rubbed his forehead in thought. "This might be the best...or the worst time to ask, since I haven't gotten back to being me yet. All the feelings that confuzzle things up are packed away still."
He held up a single finger. "But if there is a single thing I know, something that I could never pack away, it's that love is strange and mysterious, and different for every person. And loving someone doesn't necessarily being in love, like you imagine it being from all the romantic movies. For example, if I look at Joshua and Rina objectively from a distance - is what Joshua feels for Rina love? Probably. Is he going to fall in love with her? Probably. Is what she feels for him love? Could be, but probably isn't yet. Is she going to fall in love with him? Never."
"As far as you and Nika," he continued on. "it's possible that the two of you love each other, but you're not romantically in love with each other. Nika loves you, but is in love with someone else. You love her, but you don't necessarily want to spend the rest of your life with her. And that seems okay to me. You enjoy what you've got as you've got it."
--
Arden looks really confused. "Wait a second. There is a difference between love and being in love? I thought ... well, I don't know what I thought. I do know that Nika has one other man in her life, but last time we saw him he was in a coma. Apparently he's gotten better and may be with the Decatur if we meet up with them. That'll be interesting, in the Chinese sense of the word." Arden grins sickly.
"How do things that start so simple get so complicated?"
Arden takes a deep breath, "Okay. Well, thanks for your thoughts. I am truly at a loss for this whole love thing." He chuckles, “I might cry on your shoulder again if I need to."
--
"Yeah, it's a mess. The greatest philosophers of all time couldn't get a handle on it. I figure, why should I expect to be any different?" Joshua pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. "I think this is the point where I'm supposed to joke and say I want a little off the top and sides, right?"
He unfolded the piece of paper, revealing a sketch of himself, but with some subtle changes. "I need you to make a few changes to my face. Broaden my jaw a little, shift the ocular orbits a little, shift the cheekbone up a little, and maybe make it look like I broke my nose once. I need to look different. I think these changes will do the trick." He paused. "Maybe I'll grow a beard too."
--
Arden shakes his head, putting the muddle in his head aside and concentrating on Joshua's sketch. "This will definitely make you look different, but not so much that we can't recognize you." Arden makes some calculation off to the side, then picks up a clip board and begins to take notes. He puts the clipboard aside and then says, "Let me take some measurements, and I can start making the calculations for what we'll need."
Arden takes a small laser pointer and an odd magnifying glass-like thing. He shines the laser across the side of Joshua's jaw, then looks through the magnifying glass at the red line. Digital numbers appear on the handle of the magnifying glass and Arden jots them down. He repeats the same procedure with Joshua's forehead, nose, and eyes.
As he does so, he says, "Try to be as still as possible."
When he finishes, "By the way," Arden starts calculating stuff on the clipboard, "How do we handle skin color? You want to be paler or darker, tanner? Or a slight oriental skin tone added to the mix? What do you think?"
--
Joshua tried to keep his lip motions as still as possible while he answered the questions. "Let's keep the skin tone the same. I want to keep it simple for now. I have a feeling I'll have to do this again sometime, and if I don't look different enough, I can worry about it later. Mostly, I don't want to look so different that it will affect how you and the rest of the crew feel about me."
--
Arden smiles, then laughs softly, "Now that I understand a bit more about how you impersonate others, i don't think it will bother me. But how much in control is the impersonated personality? I mean, if you mimicked a race car driver, would you drive like a race car driver? Or perhaps a more germane example would be if you were a dirty cop, would you take bribes, look the other way, and kill whoever if you could cover it up; or would you obey the law and enforce it like a copy should but the one you are impersonating does not. Did that make sense?" As Arden was speaking its apparent that he had a more specific example in mind but didn't want to voice it.
--
Joshua nodded. "Makes sense. There are really two issues in question, right? One.." and he ticked off a single finger on his right hand. "Skills. I can pick up any skill within ten or fifteen minutes of watching it being performed. You've seen me do it before with the doctoring. And two..."
He ticked off the second finger. "How do I use those skills? Joshua is in control at a deep level. He has to be, or else the mission objectives would never happen. But he's buried pretty deep in there. My rule of thumb is that I don't mess up the people's lives who I borrow. If I'm a corrupt cop, turning myself in and making it so the cop would get caught when I was through borrowing him would ruin him. It's not my life to mess up. But thankfully, for their own reasons, Blue Sun never put me in a position where I would have to deliberately kill someone and never put me in a place where I would have to deliberately seduce someone. So I've never tested what would happen then, and hopefully I won't ever have to."
Looking at Arden, it was clear something was on his mind. Only way to find out is to ask... "But Arden, obviously something about my...talents, for lack of a better word, is bothering you. Feel free to say it, you can't be thinking anything worse than what I've thought about myself at one point or another in the last few months."
--
"Okay," Arden says with some hesitation, "What if... well, what if the person you become is somebody really nasty, like a serial killer. How would Joshua react to becoming that kind of monster? Would you kill people? Could you stop yourself? Could a strong enough personality overwhelm Joshua and keep the real Joshua from re-exerting control?"
--
"Well," Joshua said, "let's ignore the fact that I can't think of a good reason to be someone that nasty. I get to control my own destiny now. But in a hypothetical situation, I have to believe that there are some parts of us that can never be buried so deep that they won't surface. Perhaps that's what our soul is. The essential us that can't be changed." He paused to consider the absurdity of the situation. The potentially manufactured human being talking with the clone about the nature of the soul. You just can't make this kind of crazy up.
He continued on as he sat up a little to be able to look at Arden better. "I have to believe there is something essentially Joshua in here." And he pointed to his chest. "Otherwise, I don't think I could do what I do. Now, I'm not sure if I could tell you what that essentially Joshua thing is, but there's something."
--
"I understand that," Arden says, "But is it possible?" Arden pauses, but then quickly says, "Maybe there could be some sort of code word that would make the subsumed personality automatically submerge and bring Joshua back to the fore? Is that possible?"
--
"I wish I knew more psychology, honestly." He thought about it for a minute or the two, the silence growing loud. And then he slowly nodded. "When I pack away my personality, I go through a ritual that basically resembles the long hand version of hypnosis. I suppose something could be done to short circuit the ritual and have the personality switch happen quickly." And Joshua got an uncomfortable look on his face as he thought about the transmitters planted in the "stitches" by Blue Sun.
--
"Maybe I am being too paranoid," Arden says, as he looks away allowing Joshua the privacy of his own thoughts and feelings. Arden arranged the instruments on the tray and then goes and gets a bottle of sterilizing solution from the cabinet as well as a container of cotton balls.
--
Joshua shook his head. "I'm not sure there can be such a thing as too paranoid considering some things we've seen." He sat back, mentally prepping for the surgery to come, the semi-return of his face. But the nagging thought in the back of his head wouldn't let him relax until he said it.
"But I promise if the crew ever thinks I'm a threat, I'll step off the ship never to be seen again. Assuming Nika hasn't shot me first."
--
Arden shakes his head as he adjust the tool that makes Joshua's skin and bones malleable, "We are all threats on one level or another. Someone out there wants me as a tool or if not, then dead." Arden starts to use the buzzing device on Joshua's cheek bone, "Nika was wanted for murder, her brother in law and still has enemies that are after her. Rina is unknown, but from her words and actions I think the Alliance Navy would love to 'question' her if you know what I mean. Rick, well … Rick is the only one whose past is unknown to me. He was a big-time vid star for a while. 'That's not a robot!'"
Arden pauses, "So I wouldn't worry about it overly much. Now let’s see if I can get this done right and quick." And he bends to the work.
Go to Joshua's Crew Page or to Arden's Crew Page
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